Room

I'll be frank: I'm not the most patient person in the world.  There are a lot of literary devices that grind on my nerves (to all those authors who've jumped on the epistolary fiction bandwagon in the past few years: I'm looking at you).  I'm usually quite annoyed by the contrivance of having children serve as the narrators of adult novels, particularly those with difficult topics.  Their voices tend to read as either overly precious and precocious, or as attempts for the author to distance him/herself from difficult subject matter ("yes, I'm writing about something gruesome and awful...but with cute words and misunderstandings, so don't find the subject too off-putting!").  Am I too easily annoyed?  Probably.  I can, though, on rare occasions, overcome that.  

 

Ever since the Man Booker long list was announced in July, I have been waiting (sometimes even patiently) to read Emma Donoghue's new book Room. While Room did not win the Man Booker Prize this year (the honor went to Howard Jacobson for his book, The Finkler Question), it is a gripping story that is definitely worth a read.  Given my tendency to disregard books written from a child's vantage point, my recommendation should be taken as a testament to Donoghue's ability to write with a child's perspective and the skill with which she does it.    Room is the story of five-year-old Jack, who serves as the book's narrator, and his mother, named only as "Ma." 

In this book, rather than having the horror mitigated by a child's voice, Jack's lack of understanding and knowledge about the tenuous setting of the only life he's ever known serves to heighten the danger and terror that Ma feels.  About halfway through the book, there is a major change in their  lives and the book changes in tone.  While the second half of the book is not as suspenseful or compelling as the first, seeing the world through Jack's eyes continues to be interesting and engaging.  Overall, it's a book worth checking out.